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"Here is a message for the lady holding the umbrella on the Westbound Central Line platform. It doesn't rain underground...."

Gosh. Seems like only yesterday we were playing around with the S Stock config and performance to ensure it met the performance requirements under the PPP contract (anyone remember that?). And there were originally supposed to be more 8-car and fewer 7-car trains in the mix because LUK's...

Interesting thread and one which throws up parallels with Germany where Regional governments have long been involved in fostering local airports on vanity grounds. I used Dusseldorf Weeze around 2001 when it was recently opened, having previously been RAF Laarbruch and was struck by this big...

Presumably this means that 130-odd 7-car Stock units soldier on with tripcock equipment installed as a consequence, plus the need for retention of tripcock testers ?

Well, lounges apart, I had my first trip on LNER in 3 years today, discounted advance 1st ticket from Harrogate to KX. Really can't fault the on board team - good humoured, motivated, very well organised although my coach was admittedly only half full. Late morning departure so my meal choice...

And meanwhile the Arran service is in disarray. Newcomer Glen Sannox is now paired with chartered Alfred and both are running from Troon rather than Ardrossan because both are too big for the latter. And this weekend both were parked for linkspan work at Ardrossan and veteran Isle of Arran...

Can't refute your logic, Gloster, but I like Maths too. Manannan carries 175 cars fully laden (and this was a full sailing). Assuming they pulled 10 for a random stop, I had a 94% chance of evading having my collar felt, so on balance not a coincidence. But then again, I remember being...

Me and Mrs Pegpilot got pulled at Douglas IOM a couple of months ago on the way back to Liverpool with IOMSP. The very nice lady who directed us to the naughty shed for a thorough car search said that we'd been pulled for a "random search". I pointed out that it wasn't random - we were pulled...

It must have been 1991 when I went up to the top floor of 1CW in the builders' lift on the outside of the structure - never been so scared ! I was part of an LUL party led by Bill Clarke, then Railway Extensions Director, who was getting to grips with planning the JLE. Of course the collapse of...

Short answer, the project was sponsored by the Dept of Environment, not Transport, and was aimed at regeneration of the Isle of Dogs against a planning assumption of low-to-medium density commercial usage. And a very limited budget. £70m (if I recall) bought a light railway that was able to...

When the Skye Toll Bridge opened, it was free for farmers taking livestock to market on the mainland. There followed a procession of farmers heading for Kyle with a single sheep in the pick-up truck, only to re-emerge a few hours later on the way back to Skye, sheep still firmly on board but...

Strange to relate, but C2C (LTS as was) was supposed to be one of the first 3 TOC's to be franchised in Feb 1996 with SWT and GWR. But the weeks leading up to the franchise award showed up some "interesting" commercial practices by the incumbent (and intended MBO team), resulting in ticket...

The trouble with policing fare evasion is identifying the sweet spot on the curve. If you spent nothing on policing, then fare evasion would be off the scale bad. Spend infinity on policing then the returns can never justify the money spent. So somewhere in between lies the ideal position...

So sad to read this thread. I was part of LUL's efforts to combat graffiti in the early 90s and it seems we've learned nothing. We engaged back then with our friends in New York where, in the 80's, graffiti was out of control and definitely impacted seriously on ridership as the local...

A colleague once described how his Lerwick-based pal filled in a travel survey form he picked up in WH Smith in Lerwick. He dutifully entered "Stavanger" in the box which asked for "nearest railway station".....

One of my first design jobs in the LUL signalling drawing office at Acton in the mid eighties as a newly minted Grad was a series of TETS-Protection schemes - Trains Entering Terminal Stations. Before Moorgate it was considered inconceivable that a driver might accelerate into a headshunt with...

In answer to your question, Jan, ORR reported 53 billion pax km in 22/23, yielding a cost/pax km of 47p or so. But 22/23 was partially Covid impacted and we were up at about 67 Bn pax km in 2019/2020 before covid hit. Adjusting for that would give a figure more like 40p/pax km.

At the risk of massive over-simplification, let's have a look at industry data for 22/23. Industry costs £25 Bn, train km 460 million, so cost/train km average £54 or so. But of course this hides massive differences between long IC sets and 2-car local DMU services. And the point has already...

Hello all. New to the Forum after lurking for a while and currently paralysed with boredom at home. But to business. When TfL (or LT as was) starting letting bus contracts in the 1980s there was debate about whether Net Cost contracts or Gross Cost contracts were best. When the rail...